


Reservation

by vaguelyfamiliar



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: (minor) Breathplay, 2018-2019 NHL Season, Angst, Happy Ending, Light dom/sub undertones, M/M, Open Relationships, Sleeping around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 04:03:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17759417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguelyfamiliar/pseuds/vaguelyfamiliar
Summary: It's not that Claude's against relationships. It's that relationships work against what Claude is.





	Reservation

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Here is my odd little (non)-Valentine’s Day fic! Hope this upcoming Feb 14 is filled with lots of love in its various forms for all of you.
> 
> As you may have gathered from the tags, this fic contains several very brief scenes of Claude having sex with people who are not Sid. If this isn’t your cup of tea, feel free to press the back button. Additionally, I don’t want to get too deep into queer theory/identity debates, but I expand a little bit on this subject (as it relates to this fic) in the end notes if you’re interested or troubled about it. You're welcome to scroll all the way down and read those beforehand if you don't mind minor spoilers!
> 
> We should all be fully aware of this at this point, but this is a work of total fiction, and by no means serves as speculation or information about the real people mentioned within. If you or someone you know is heavily connected to the NHL, the Philadelphia Flyers, or the Pittsburgh Penguins, do yourself a favor and stop scrolling here.
> 
> As always, I'm [quickxotic](http://quickxotic.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!

“You again,” the lady at the front desk greets, smacking her gum in the back of her mouth. The roots of her hair are growing in gray above where the rest is dyed chestnut. That probably was her natural color, a decade ago. “Checking in?”

“Yep,” Claude says.

“You got a reservation?” she asks, even though she damn well knows he does. _Rhonda_ , her name tag says. Claude always forgets.

“Yep. Under Giroux?” He never bothers with a pseudonym anymore. The only person who could sell him out for this is right across the front desk from him, but it’s been three years, and she keeps his secret.

She probably doesn’t know what his secret really is, if she even knows who Claude himself is, for that matter. There are other things that a one-night reservation at irregular intervals throughout the year might suggest—that he’s meeting up with a hooker, probably.

Truth be told, Claude thinks it’s worse than that.

 

\---

 

“You’re earlier than usual,” Sid remarks over the top of his book. He’s propped all the pillows up against the headboard to support his back, and he’s crossed one ankle over the other. Claude stares at his bare feet on the comforter.

“Yeah, I…” Claude tries to come up with something, but he has no excuse. He generally makes it a point not to show up until about a half hour after they say they’re going to meet, but this time he’d been antsy.

Sid doesn’t seem bothered for an answer. He folds the jacket of his book cover over the page he’s on as a bookmark and sets it on the bedside table in exchange for a little styrofoam cup. It must have coffee in it, the shitty kind from free packets that brew in the hotel room pot.

Their first time, Claude had wanted to hole them up in some truly nasty motel off the highway, the type with cockroaches instead of coffee, just to prove that Sid couldn’t handle it. He craved evidence that Sid wasn’t as humble, as modest, as _oh don’t worry about me I’ll be just fine_ as he gets lauded for being.

Sid had put a stop to that before it ever got going, and fixed them up in a nondescript chain hotel that was good enough. “I never said I was those things,” he said. “Only other people did.”

Claude had figured that that was true. Plus, for every article that talked about what a stand-up guy Sid was, there was another that called him a diva, that detailed how he needed everything _just so_. It all really depends on who you ask.

Sid uncrosses his legs and immediately his thighs look pornographic, splayed a couple inches apart like that. He puts down his coffee cup, licks over his front teeth, and says, “Come here.”

 

\---

 

Claude gets back to Philly in plenty of time for practice. He’d left while Sid was still sleeping, like he does most times, and Harrisburg is a fair bit closer to Philadelphia than it is to Pittsburgh.

They have a game the next day, and they lose it to the Islanders. Claude goes out afterward and picks up. Used to be, he wouldn’t have sex with anyone else for at least a few days after he met up with Sid, just to keep the feeling of that on him.

Lately, though, he does the opposite, and finds someone new as soon as he reasonably can. Like washing Sid off.

 

\---

 

The girl he picks up has an incredible rack. She makes sweet keening noises from under him and she’s hot and wet around his cock, but it’s her tits he keeps looking at, the way they move with every time he rocks into her. He buries his face between them, and as he’s coming he thinks he’d rather die than have to give this up forever for someone.

 

\---

 

They have a rare three days off between games, and Jake swears by the effect that getting drunk together has on team chemistry, so he has everyone over at his place. Raff brings his cousin who’s in town from Austria, someone who doesn’t really know who any of them are. He’s a little shier than Raff but just as funny, kind of cute in the way he sticks close to Raff’s shoulder all night but pipes up when he has something truly clever to say. He keeps peering over at Claude with his eyes alight. Claude may not be able to pronounce the guy’s name, but he knows who he’s leaving with.

Ghost meanders over to him just as Raff’s cousin ducks away to get another drink. “Another hook-up already?” he asks. “And related to _Raff_ , no less!” His smile says that he’s just giving Claude shit, but still, Claude misses when Ghost was too young and scared of him to give him shit. Now he thinks he can _hang_. “Dude, didn’t you just go home with some girl last night?”

“You can never have too much sex,” Claude shrugs, picking at the label on his beer bottle.

“There are a few pretty ugly medical conditions that you can develop from having too much sex,” Ghost counters. “Gina’s a nurse, so I know my shit. Anyway, don’t you ever think about stopping?”

Claude puts his beer down. “Stopping?”

“Yeah, you know. Settling down with someone, or whatever. It’s actually really nice, G.”

Claude scoffs. What the fuck does Ghost think? Of course it might be nice, to have someone to tell about his day, who would know how to make him feel better when sad, and who his dogs would warm up to. All shit Claude wants and is fundamentally incapable of ever having.

“ _No._ I swear to God, Shayne, no,” he hisses, biting down on his tongue when he realizes that he’s used Ghost’s real name instead of his nickname. It makes the whole thing sound more severe. Ghost blinks at him a few times, and then they’re interrupted by Raff’s cousin, who reappears just in time to stop Claude from having to say anything else.

Instead, he can turn his attention to making sure he gets laid tonight. Ghost slinks away when Claude focuses back in on his target, and it doesn’t take long to talk the guy into coming home with him.

They get right to it when the door to Claude’s place closes behind them. This guy seems more confident kissing and touching Claude than making small talk with strangers at Jake’s place. Claude likes that, enough to let himself get fucked tonight.

Claude’s into it pretty much right up until the guy is actually inside him. He moves in and out with essentially no change in intensity, a little too fast with insufficient build-up. Claude is suddenly all too aware of the moment, eyes open and glued to the ceiling, and he gets frustrated when his erection starts to flag.

He shuts his eyes again. Ugh. He tries never to do this, but it’d be a lot easier if it were someone else’s face above him. There’s only one face Claude ever thinks about outside of being in bed with them. He pictures Sid, the healthy flush of his cheeks. The way that sometimes, when he’s due for a haircut, some of his inky hair will fall over his forehead as he’s fucking Claude, sweat-damp and curling.

It’s sacrilege, to pretend Sid would ever fuck him this poorly and not notice or care, but it helps.

 

\---

 

Claude found out soon after Prague that Sid gets to know new partners in bed in an eerily similar manner to how he settles in with new linemates on the ice—by talking their heads off.

Their very first night in the Harrisburg hotel, Claude probably begged him to shut up at least five times, but Sid hadn’t listened. It was “How do you want it?” and “Do you like that?” at every turn, and not in the sexy way. He was mulish and bullheaded in his persistence with the questions until he _made_ Claude communicate with him, which is something Claude doesn’t often do with the people he hooks up with. If someone’s bad in bed, Claude just lets them be bad until it’s over and he never has to sleep with them again. He doesn’t better them through sheer force of will and a few well-placed directives.

But Sid had clearly realized that he could refuse to be less than perfect at something when there was someone right there who could just _tell him how to be perfect_. And sure enough, by the fourth or fifth time they were together, Claude had never been with anyone better.

He should’ve known then. He never feels strongly enough about anyone to sleep with them more than once or twice. At the time, he just put it down to the sex being exceptionally good, maybe combined with the thrill of sneaking around with the enemy. But now, years later, Claude knows it’s not just that. He’s not an idiot.

What he fears, though, is that Sid might know it too. Sid might know that there’s something more there, but he lets Claude show up late and leave while he’s sleeping anyway.

 

\---

 

 _Found your toothpaste in my bag and thought about you today_ , Sid texts him.

Claude doesn’t reply. He almost never does, unless it directly pertains to setting plans to meet up.

Sid doesn’t expect him to reply, or he would’ve stopped sending messages like that ages ago. He knows Claude’s not going to send anything back. Maybe that’s why he never phrases them as questions.

It’s probably inefficient and ironic, the way that they don’t even fuck when their teams play each other—the way that Claude can ignore Sid on and off the ice whether they’re in Philly or Pittsburgh, but he’ll drive two hours to touch Sid all over as long as it’s in neutral territory, a chain hotel in the middle of the state. But Claude imagines letting Sid see his apartment, his favorite places, his life. He imagines having that once and then losing it later the way those things always go, and just…no. Sid’s not invited.

 

\---

 

The Flyers’ season started okay, but it turns to shit pretty quickly. They can’t string more than a couple wins in a row together, and fans are screaming for trades, for Hak’s head on a platter. Claude likes Hak, he’s a good guy. But he’d rather never see Hak’s face again than lose Simmer or Jake to some other team.

They lose four games in a row in November, and nothing’s changed yet. Claude feels nervous.

 

\---

 

Sid is absolutely drilling him into the mattress. Claude’s hips are open gaping wide like a frog, the side of his face pressed into the pillow so hard he can barely breathe, which is part of the idea. It’s not even about how hard Sid’s fucking him, it’s Sid’s weight covering his back so completely. Claude doesn’t know how he maintains the leverage needed to keep moving into Claude and hold him down like this at the same time, but he loses grasp of all thought soon enough. He barely processes it when Sid tells him, “Okay, head down again in five. You ready?”

Claude groans his assent. It’s not a yes, but. They only have one signal that means no, and they’ve built enough trust over three years to know that neither of them would hesitate to use it if they needed to.

“Let’s go,” Sid says after he counts down, likely five seconds on the dot. Then he threads his fingers through the hair at the base of Claude’s skull and turns his face fully into the pillow.

Claude can’t breathe, which is exactly what gets him high. Like the brief lack of oxygen to his brain magnifies the way Sid’s cock keeps nailing that spot inside of him, the way he’s so heavy on his back that Claude’s dick, trapped between his stomach and the mattress, gets just enough friction. Claude has no concept of time measurements right now, but he knows Sid lifts his hand away after ten seconds, because that’s how they do it. Claude smiles a little bit and lets his head droop back down onto the pillow even though Sid’s not holding him there anymore.

“Hey, you know the rule,” Sid reprimands, so Claude takes a gasping breath in. The rule is that he has to breathe audibly every time Sid lets him up. Otherwise, Sid will have to stop and ask if he’s okay, and Claude doesn’t need him to. He feels _good_ , good like he’s on the verge of jelly body and brain, just needs Sid to snap his rubber band so he can go loose.

“‘Bout ready to come, huh? You want it like this? Or ass up so I can touch you?” Claude will never understand how Sid’s voice stays sweet when he says words like that. He whines the loudest at the second one, so Sid works an arm in under Claude’s hips and lifts until Claude’s up on his knees. He can’t get to his hands, would never be able to when he’s like this, but that’s okay. Sid’s hand is around his cock and Sid’s balls are hitting that hard-to-name space that’s between ass and top of thigh.

Claude’s orgasm has idle tears springing up behind his eyelids. After he shudders through it, Sid lays his hips down on the bed again. “Keep,” Claude forces out, voice a low rasp from exhaustion and disuse.

“I know what you like,” Sid reminds him, and he fucks Claude a lot slower and softer then, the fill of him inside Claude more comforting than pleasurable. Claude lets himself space, just detach his mind from his body and float.

“Oh yeah?” Claude thinks to say a few minutes too late, the taunt sleepy and weak.

“Yeah, I know what you like,” Sid says. “I get you there better than anyone, huh? You’ve been with a hundred people and you’ll be with so many more, but you don’t let anyone else see you like this.”

That’s the truth, that’s right. Claude forgets to be scared of it, for a second.

Sid must come at some point, but Claude only notices after the fact when he’s pulling out, whispering praises that Claude can’t really make out. Sid rolls off of him and doesn’t try to get Claude to move, just rubs his back for who knows how long, until the feeling is returning to his limbs.

“Are you all back? Feeling okay?” Sid asks eventually.

“How do you know I don’t have syphilis from the hundreds of people I’ve been with?” Claude asks him in return, still lying on his tummy. He flips his other cheek onto the pillow so he can peep over at Sid.

“Okay, you’re back,” Sid laughs. “First of all, I think syphilis is visible, isn’t it? Second, we use condoms anyway, so _I’d_ probably be fine. And besides,” he inches closer. “I know you’re being safe out there.” Then he gives the back of Claude’s neck one small, tender kiss, like a reward.

Claude _is_ being safe, he never forgoes protection. But Sid has no proof of that. He shouldn’t say it as if he does.

 

\---

 

They don’t always do it like that. It’s not always the kind of sex where Claude… _submits_ to Sid, or whatever. Claude would never let someone have a power over him that permanent, and Sid knows that, doesn’t want that.

It’s just sometimes that Claude really needs it. He has the sinking feeling that it happens when they’ve been apart too long, and Claude needs help remembering exactly where he belongs.

 

\---

 

 _NBCSports: Flyers fire GM Ron Hextall. Sports Illustrated: Former GM Ron Hextall ‘Stunned’ Losing Flyers Fired Him. ESPN: Flyers fire head coach Dave Hakstol. WPVI-TV: Philadelphia Flyers head coach Dave Hakstol fired._ The Twitter account called _Is Hakstol fired yet?_ , which someone’s been running since March of two seasons ago, finally tweets: _YES!!!!!!!!!_

It’s Claude, Simmer, and Jake who have to deal with the fallout. It’s them who have to answer to the media.

Claude knows this is what the young guys wanted. TK and Patty come into the room with their heads high, subdued but confident. The others, Provy and Oskar and Laughts, they seem to be on the same page. They never thought they could win with Hak. They needed a new voice in the room, so maybe they could turn things around in time.

But Claude has been through this before. He’s seen terrible coaches who get fired be replaced by great coaches who get fired and then get replaced by average coaches who get fired. Claude knows it’s never, never that simple.

 

\---

 

“Say my name,” the guy says from between Claude’s legs. Then he takes Claude back in, sucks further down and twice as hard.

Claude’s never cared much for people saying _his_ name in bed, but different people are into different things. “Ethan,” he obliges, hitching on a groan.

Claude never worries about accidentally saying Sid’s name in bed with someone else. Nobody does him like Sid, so he always knows he’s with a stranger.

 

\---

 

He sees Sid again pretty early into the new year, on another mutual off day. They fuck right away when Claude gets there. Claude doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong; all he’s tried to do is maintain a careful distance from Sid, take a few steps back whenever he feels tempted to get too close. Instead, he ends up clinging, feeling more and more desperate for it every time. There’s something about seeing Sid’s miles of skin, tracking the changes in his body, his hockey bruises coming and going, his muscles thickening and thinning out every year. Claude could keep a calendar that way.

Sid is in the shower getting clean when Claude’s stomach starts to rumble. They usually meet late enough not to eat dinner together, and if they do get hungry, they just get room service. But it’s a Sunday, and room service ends earlier than usual. Claude tries to remember whether he still has an old packet of almonds at the bottom of his overnight bag.

Sid emerges from the bathroom dripping and pink from the heat of the shower. He doesn’t bother much with modesty as he towels himself off. He has to bend over to dry each calf and thigh—he’s not trying to make it suggestive, but with Sid’s body, anything could be. Sometimes Claude wishes he had video of Sid in regular moments like this, accidentally and lumberingly erotic, so he could rewind it back and rewatch as many times as he pleased.

Claude’s stomach announces itself again. He groans and turns onto his side in hopes that it’ll ease the noise.

“You hungry?” Sid asks needlessly, slipping a shirt over his head.

“Yeah. Too late for room service, though.”

Sid nods, keeping his eyes down. “Y’know, we could go grab something. There’s that pizza place around the corner.”

They must both be aware of the fact that they’ve never done anything like that before. Claude is starving, though, so there isn’t really anything else to do.

Stepping out across the threshold into the hallway with Sid following him is surreal enough. Riding the elevator with him, physically leaving the hotel property with him, is double that. There’s a very specific way they do things. This isn’t it. But at the same time, there’s no reason Claude should overanalyze it. He tries not to and is successful for the most part. He does get a little hung up on worrying that someone’s going to take a picture of them—the chances that they’ll get photographed late on a Sunday night in Harrisburg are minimal, but not unrealistic, especially considering how jarred someone might be to recognize them out together. He pulls his hood up over his head, which is warmer anyway in the January weather.

Claude would love for it to be awkwardly silent for their entire walk there, but Sid makes chatter. That’s usually Claude’s job, but tonight Sid asks him how the team is, as if they’re not bitter rivals. How are they liking the new coach? Does Claude think he’s effective? Is he liking playing at center again? Claude answers, and then the questions turn from interview questions to real questions. What did Claude do for New Year’s Eve? Is his family coming down for the Stadium Series? What does Claude want on his pizza?

They can’t agree on toppings so they have to order two pizzas, and when the cashier rattles off their total Claude realizes they forgot to order separately. He pulls out his wallet to see if he happens to have the right amount in cash to cover his, but Sid hands the cashier his card without waiting.

It’s not a big deal. They both have more money than they need. But still, Claude fumbles a few bills out of his wallet, saying, “Here, this should be—”

Sid gives one decisive shake of his head. “No, no, I got it.”

Claude stares. “It’s a pizza, Sid, it—”

“I got it,” he repeats. “I bought it for you, it’s on me.” End of discussion. So Claude sticks his money back in his wallet, his wallet back in his pocket, and his protests back down his throat. He sits down and waits for the pizza Sid is apparently treating him to, and he’s only obedient because he’s a little bit dumbfounded.

Sid munches on his terrible pizza and looks pleased to be there in this run-down hole-in-the-wall that buzzes with the sound of old neon signs. He looks about two comfortable silences away from going, _this is nice, right?_

They don’t touch each other or even stand too close together at any point. Sid keeps his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and peers at Claude every so often from under the brim of his black baseball cap, the bill facing forward as it usually is. Claude has only ever seen Sid wear it backward when he’s working out or drunk.

It’s not a date, or if it is then it’s the least effort Claude’s ever put into a date, but Sid seems quietly thrilled anyway on their walk back to the hotel. The tragedy of it punches Claude in the stomach. Sid deserves more than this bare minimum, more than what Claude is equipped to give him.

Claude doesn’t tell him that this is why he holds Sid firmly as his big spoon in bed that night. In the morning, he wakes up at the same time he always sneaks out, and for the first time, he hesitates. He casts his eyes over Sid’s shape, his knobby shoulder blades disrupting the strong plane of his back. Sid snoozes on, oblivious. Claude takes Sid’s shoulder into his grip and shakes him stiffly, can’t bear to be gentle or he won’t end up doing it at all. When Sid opens his eyes, Claude lets him know, “I’m heading out.”

These are things he can give Sid, even if they’re not nearly enough.

Sid, sleepy and disoriented, reaches up to hold Claude’s chin between his thumb and his other four fingers. He lifts his head enough to press a closed-mouth kiss to Claude’s lips, and then he snuffles back into sleep while Claude begins tearing himself from their bed.

 

\---

 

One night, Claude dreams that Sid is his soulmate. They have proof on each others’ skin, so Claude knows for sure. Claude feels happy, definitely, but what’s more important is that Claude feels _right_ , correct, confident in being with Sid. He’s supposed to be with Sid.

He wakes up grasping at wisps of it, his dream world unravelling before him and disappearing in fragments from both his sight and his memory. It happens fast and cruel, and within the space of minutes he can’t remember what kind of marks they had, where they lived, how it felt. That feeling doesn’t exist in the real world, that external assurance that someone is meant for you.

Claude dreams that Sid is his soulmate, and he wakes up blinking unshed tears away.

 

\---

 

The All-Star Weekend in San Jose is pretty average. Sid doesn’t even partake in the Skills Competition due to illness. It’s just a common cold, he admits to Claude over text, but he doesn’t want to push it while he has the opportunity to get better before the second half of the season, plus it gets him out of media day. Claude had laughed at the time when he read the message, but then a film crew is forcing him to twerk in such a manner as to pop ping pong balls out of a slot in a tin tissue box they’ve strapped to his hips, and he thinks bitterly that Sid is both a slippery good-for-nothing bastard and a genius.

Claude still stops by his hotel room to bring him take-out for dinner and sit in the armchair by the bed for twenty minutes of whatever movie Sid has on the TV. Sid’s sick, so there’s no way he’s getting any closer than that, but it’s nice.

Sid miraculously feels better just in time to score four assists and four goals in the actual All-Star Games and win a new car he has no use for. Classic Crosby. But since he’s feeling well enough to compete, that means he’s doing well enough to go out afterward too. They wind up in the same crowd of guys headed to a low-key local pub—it’s Burnzie and the Sharks, plus Letang, Fleury, Stammer, and O’Reilly. The kid Barzal is well-loved enough already to weasel his way into their ranks for the night too, especially after the performance he put up with Sid and Letang, so they all have a great time shoving him toward girls even though the average woman in this bar is closer to thirty than twenty.

“C’mon Mat, what about the brunette in the blue shirt? Let’s see your moves,” Karlsson teases, nodding in the direction of a woman across the bar who’s obviously at least a decade Barzy’s senior.

Barzy’s blush and grin are enough to indicate that he’s loving this, getting thoroughly chirped by all of his heroes. That’s acceptance at its finest in the language of hockey. “I can’t, guys,” he laughs along. “I have no moves.”

“Doubt that, killer,” Stammer says. “I see you posting your Adidas shoots on Instagram.”

“Okay, okay,” Barzy relents. “I’m just…kind of in a thing, with this girl in New York.”

“In a _thing?_ ” asks Pavs, scratching his head. “What does that mean these days? Are you together, or are you not together?”

Barzy wavers his hand in a wishy-washy gesture. “Like, we’re not official, but we both know we caught feelings and all that.”

“ _Caught feelings_?” Pavs whines again. “What is this chit chat? Like, did I ‘catch feelings’ for my wife? Am I in a ‘thing’ with her?”

“Yeah, a marriage,” Fleury snickers. O’Reilly snorts.

Barzy, however, lights up with the turning of the tables. Just a moment ago, he was a kid tagging along with thirty-year-old men, subjected to their teasing and ribbing, and now he has them hanging on his every word. “It just means we’re saying it’s casual right now, but really we like each other. It’s a thing.”

“I completely get it,” Sid chimes in as back-up, his eyes slipping to Claude’s, tipsy smirk firmly in place. Claude gives him a grin back. How could he not?

“Ew, spare us the details about whatever vanilla sex you’re having, Sid,” Burnzie laughs.

 _Vanilla_. God, if only they knew. Claude bites down on his bottom lip, and Sid’s eyes keep flickering back to his. Maybe they will fuck this weekend. If Claude catches a cold, so be it.

Letang’s voice interrupts that line of thought. “Wait a minute, but you’re not allowed to hook up with anyone else? That makes it a relationship.”

Barzy’s flush grows until it’s unfurling down his neck. He looks bright, happy. “We haven’t talked about a relationship, but I just don’t really _want_ to get with anyone else. That’s how it works when you love someone, right?”

Claude’s stomach plummets to the floor, and his gaze follows right after. That’s how it works for everyone in this world except Claude, apparently. It’s tough to hear a twenty-one-year-old kid spell out exactly how Sid deserves better than him, how Claude doesn’t love Sid enough to ever keep him.

And Sid’s hearing it too. Sid, who not two minutes ago was smiling at Claude so deep it made his eyes into little crescent slivers, is probably now reminded that Claude isn’t worth his effort, never was.

“Not always,” Fleury reasons, but Claude can’t hear him over the buzzing in his ears.

He absolutely pounds back the remaining half of his beer and chokes out, “Gotta go. Early flight.” It takes a lot of effort to avoid Sid’s eyes as he turns to weave his way through the throng of bargoers.

“Claude,” Sid calls just a moment too late, a near miss of just the same kind that usually defines them.

 

\---

 

Claude spends the following few days silently terrified that Sid won’t want to see him anytime soon, until he drives himself crazy enough to just text Sid first and ask. They don’t really address anything that happened at All-Stars, but Sid tells him to _make a reservation for 2 weeks from tomorrow, if you want_. So once they’ve confirmed for mid-February, Claude finds himself counting down the days, measuring time in _4 days till Sid, 3 days till Sid,_ and so on until finally it’s time.

He walks into the lobby in a haze. His mind is already a couple minutes ahead of him, imagining Sid in their room settling in. He’ll have already turned the heater on. Maybe he’s watching something on pay-per-view.

“Hi sugar,” Rhonda greets him. “Interesting night for this.”

Claude wonders what on Earth could make this night more interesting than any other. He’ll be with Sid, and that’s enough to make it Claude’s most interesting night of the month, but that doesn’t seem to be what she means.

Claude could care less about cryptic comments from the front desk lady, though. He gets checked in, collects his room key, and heads upstairs.

Sid doesn’t seem to behave too abnormally. The sex is kind of tender and quiet, marked by Sid’s deep breaths and Claude’s own reverent sighs. Sid spends a lot of time kissing him, and when he’s not, his lips are somewhere nearby, hovering over Claude’s cheek or jaw.

“I love this, you know,” Sid whispers against his mouth. But he says stuff like that all the time. Claude admits the same very rarely, but he does.

He does tonight. “I want you all the time.” Claude says it without the qualifications that deepen and cheapen the sentiment: _I want you permanently and in real-world spaces. But I can’t make the exchanges necessary to ask that of you. I can’t make the same sacrifices everyone always wants._ Still, that doesn’t change the bottom line. Claude wants Sid, selfishly and desperately.

Sid kisses him and kisses him and kisses him. Claude only realizes after he’s left the next morning that his phone says the date is February 15th.

 

\---

 

Claude almost never watches Penguins games on TV. A lot of the time, his and Sid’s teams play on the same night, so it would be impossible even if he wanted to. There’s one night, though, when Claude has nothing to do and Pittsburgh is hosting the Bruins. NBC Sports is airing the game nationally, so Claude figures he might as well put it on while he’s cooking.

He’s paying more attention to his food than the game when he notices that the broadcasters are running through the usual gamut of ‘bad hit’ clichés: _…got buried on the play and goes down…slow to get up…_

Claude looks up with mild interest. The camera is zoomed close on a player whose face is obscured, features wholly out of view as he cradles his head in his arms rocks back and forth on his knees a bit. Claude’s stomach twists itself into knots.

There’s a big fat 87 on the back of the jersey filling the screen, but Claude didn’t need that to know.

Sid takes another excruciating minute to get up, but he does get up. “Nobody in hockey wants to see a player go down like that, especially a player like Crosby,” one of the commentators remarks.

He’s wrong, obviously, seeing as it keeps happening and won’t stop for as long as Sid plays. As long as any of them do.

“Thank God he’s up,” the other says. That, Claude can agree with.

When Sid finally reaches the edge of the ice, he bypasses the bench and goes straight down the tunnel. The clock ticks down to zero, and Sid doesn’t return.

Claude shovels chicken and asparagus down his throat mechanically. It turns out he’s a terrible cook, so he can barely get it down. His nervous thumbs keep floating back to the home button on his phone. Every time he touches it, the screen tells him that only a minute has passed. He must check the clock thirty or forty times before he unlocks it for real, pages through to Sid’s contact, and presses to call.

“Hey,” Sid’s voice answers, ragged and low.

“I saw the hit,” Claude says. He’d seen the aftermath, at least, seen what mattered. “Are you…?” The only two possible endings to that question are ‘okay’ or ‘concussed again.’ He knows what the answer is to the first one, and doesn’t want to know what the answer is to the second one.

“I’m just kind of banged up,” Sid sighs. “Just now they said probably no concussion. Gonna have to take the precautions though, and.” He stops.

That answers one question. Claude tries to wait him out, but there’s only quiet breathing. He’ll have to prod. “Yeah. Are _you_ okay, though?”

More breathing. “It was scary,” Sid finally admits. “For a sec there I thought for sure—you know.”

God, Claude knows. He’s never had a concussion as bad as Sid’s have been in the past, but he can practically feel it, the tunnel vision, the pounding in his brain. “You have someone to stay over and wake you up every two hours? I could give you wake-up calls.”

“Phil’s gonna stay at mine,” says Sid. Claude hears the dull thunk of a car door closing, and hopes that Sid knows better than to be driving himself home from the arena. “But hey, listen, that’s really thoughtful. And I wouldn’t mind a call in the morning anyway.”

Claude stares into the glare of the overhead light in his kitchen and realizes for the first time exactly who he’s on the phone with and exactly what he’s been saying. Now would be the time to shrug it all off, to pretend like he didn’t offer to stay awake with Sid from the opposite side of their state. Sid would let him.

“Then I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Great,” Sid says, sounding totally different. Claude can picture the hint of a smile that’s in his tone. “I…”

“Yeah,” Claude says when he doesn’t finish, and they both just breathe a little more until one of them hangs up first.

It feels like all the mornings he’s looked at Sid’s face soft with sleep and wanted so badly not to leave him there alone. It’s just like something he’s never actually done before, waking up in Harrisburg and not fucking moving a muscle.

 

\---

 

The Flyers make a huge, incredible push for a playoff spot that includes a whopping win streak and whisks Carter Hart into the spotlight of the entire National Hockey League with the records he’s already shattering in goal, but in the end, it doesn’t work. It’s too late. It’s been too late since November, yet they still had to play a whole hopeless season, get worn and torn just the same as any other team, except the Flyers had no prize to play for. It’s painful, nettling, that they spent the entire rest of the season working tirelessly to claw themselves back into position and only get almost there.

Claude never _gives up hope_ , exactly. He doesn’t care if it makes him seem like he lacks humility, like he’s cocky; Claude has to believe in himself and his team because there was never anybody else who would. He was never like Sid, who had it drilled into him that he was great and special long before he even hit puberty. There are other struggles that come with that, Claude’s sure, but nobody ever told Claude he was special. Nobody ever acted like Claude could be something. Nobody ever offered Claude that kind of confidence, so Claude had to carve it out of himself. That’s why they could ask Claude a million times: who’s the best player in the league? Claude Giroux. What player would you draft to start a franchise with? Claude Giroux. Who would you pick first for a fantasy team this season? Claude Giroux. He’ll say it’s himself every time, even if he’s objectively wrong, because nobody else ever planned on believing for him.

But it’s times like these that Claude wonders if no one believes in him because he really isn’t good enough, if he’s too old to hope for next year every year. Maybe he’ll never win the Cup. Plenty of incredible players don’t. Despite that truth, Claude can’t bear to even think it. It’s an unacceptable result. And that makes each and every playoff miss or elimination Claude’s been through unacceptable. The weight of that adds up over time.

April 2019 is probably as close as Claude’s ever come to crumbling underneath it.

 

\---

 

He shows up at the hotel same as always and checks in with Rhonda as quickly as possible. He’s crawling out of his skin with his desire to be near Sid, practically vibrating from it. When he tries to work the key card into the slot, he fumbles and drops it. He plucks it from the ground and slides it in right this time, but the light turns red and the door won’t open. He tries it again and gets the same result. Finally he just knocks, striking the door with his open palm, which makes it sound more like banging than he means it to.

Sid opens the door from inside. “Something wrong?” he asks, and he means with the key, but like. Everything’s wrong.

Claude wills his face not to crumple as he shuts the door behind himself. “No. Come on, take your clothes off.” He tugs up the hem of Sid’s shirt, impatient.

“Right, hello to you too,” Sid drawls, raising his arms so Claude can finish pulling the fabric over his head anyway. Claude practically kisses him through it, or at least is right there to pounce as soon as the shirt’s done away with. He greets Sid frantic and tongue-heavy with both hands at the base of his head.

Sid’s there with him, snaking an arm around his waist to hold him steady. The sloppy making out goes on long enough that it should be—well, like—

Claude palms at Sid’s ass and Sid takes it as a cue to get things moving south, slips his hand into Claude’s waistband and moves it down to squeeze at his cock. Then he hesitates, puts it back on Claude’s hip. They kiss more, and Claude grinds their hips together, thinking maybe the friction will help. Sid’s getting hard, he can feel it against his groin, and Claude…

Sid pushes gently at his shoulder for room to speak. “You’re not, uh. Do you—”

“I’ll get there, just…like.” Claude toes out of his shoes, shoves his pants and briefs down, steps out of the legs, and takes Sid’s wrist to guide his hand back to his dick. Sid holds it there, cupping it patiently, careful with the pressure he does apply. “Just keep—”

“Claude,” Sid murmurs, a sigh following shortly after. The hand that was on Claude’s soft cock comes up to the back of his neck. Claude groans a distressed protest, but Sid is soothing and sure with Claude’s face in his palm when he says, “Hold on, hold on, it’s fine, okay? We don’t need to force it.”

The exhale Claude lets out is pure chagrin. “It’s not you or anything.”

“I know. That’s not what I’m worried about. Here, let’s sit.” So Sid cajoles him into sitting at the foot of the bed, both of them half-naked in opposite ways. Claude had been so desperate just a moment ago, but Sid lays a hand on his bare thigh, and all the agitated _rush_ just leaks away out of Claude’s pores like water through a drain. The bed he’s on now reminds him of sleep, not sex, and he’s feeling a little drowsy, like all his exhaustion from the few weeks since he last saw Sid is flowering at once.

“I’m tired,” Claude says.

“I can tell,” Sid soothes, his hand rubbing circles over Claude’s thigh. Then he pats it as a parting gesture as he stands, heads toward the bathroom, and says, “Wait a second, okay?” over his shoulder.

Claude’s eyes drift shut. The sound of running water comes from the bathroom, a faucet and not the hollower spritzing sound of the shower. After a couple of minutes float by, Sid is at Claude’s side again, pulling Claude’s shirt off, urging him up with a guiding hand on the center of his back. “Come on.”

It doesn’t even occur to Claude to guess what he’s being shepherded into the bathroom for, but when he lays eyes on the drawn bath, it makes sense. He steps into the tub without asking whether that’s what he’s supposed to be doing.

He’s not sure when Sid lost his pants, but Sid steps in behind him and lowers himself into the warmth of the water, keeping his legs open for Claude to slot right in, back to his chest.

With both of them in there, the waterline comes up a little high toward the rim of the tub, but it’s not like they’re doing much splashing around. Claude’s fatigue is catching up with him. Behind closed eyelids, he hears the snick of Sid opening the mini hotel shampoo, and the scent of verbena fills the air. He falls asleep to the comfort of Sid’s fingers moving over his scalp.

When Claude opens his eyes again, he’s dry and warm under covers. It takes a second to remember where he is, his disorientation exaggerated by the fact that he’s not waking up in the same place he fell asleep. He straightens out an arm and it comes into contact with damp terrycloth on the other side of the bed.

He pushes himself upright by his palms and stares blearily into the yellow lamplight of the room. Sid is sitting in the chair at the desk, paging through a book and sipping at that same free hotel coffee. It must be well into the evening now, way too late for caffeine, but Claude doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything, finds himself unable to while he’s picturing Sid picking him up from out of the bath and carrying him bridal-style over to the bed, laying him out and toweling him off and tucking him in the dry side.

“Thanks,” is the first word Claude can conjure. “I needed that.”

Sid marks his spot in the book and sets it down on the desk. “Slept for less than an hour. You could nap more if you want.”

Claude shrugs. “If I do that, I’ll just wake up in another hour and then not get to sleep till 3 AM.”

“Well, it’s an option,” Sid says. “When I checked us in, Rhonda at the front desk asked if we wanted a late check-out. I said no, but—”

Claude frowns. That’s not right. “You didn’t check us in,” he interrupts. “I did.”

Sid’s eyebrows furrow. “No, I checked in, I always do. The room’s under your name, but Rhonda always lets me check in for us. How do you think I get a key to get in here before you?”

Claude zones out trying to decode that one. It’s weird enough to hear Sid say Rhonda’s name like he knows her too, like she exists outside of the vacuum of the brief moments where Claude interacts with her to check in. But beyond that, he can physically feel his brain throb as it’s trying to figure out what kind of Twilight Zone shit must be going on if he and Sid both think they’ve had the experience of checking in every time they’ve come here over the past three-and-a-half years. “Hold up, I have to go talk to someone,” he says, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress to stand. He finds his discarded shirt and jeans from earlier and redresses in them, telling a perplexed Sid, “I’ll be right back, I promise.”

“Uh, who are you gonna talk to?” Sid calls as Claude is on his way out the door.

“Rhonda,” Claude answers. Their mutual friend, apparently.

Sid gets here earlier than him, each time. Sid getting here earlier means that the room has already been checked into. Every single time, Claude could have just walked right up and knocked.

He didn’t think to put socks or shoes on, so the marble tile of the lobby floor is frigid under his feet. He power-walks himself up to the reception desk, vacant of anyone but Rhonda as usual. “Every time you check me in, my room’s already been checked into,” he states without preface, shifting his weight back and forth between his cold feet increasingly quickly.

“Oh, I know,” she says. “I don’t ever actually do anything on the computer to check you in, other than get you a key. I just like making you squirm. I like making you _say it_ , you know?” She lets out a low whistle. “And with a man like you have in your bed, honey, you should have to say it. Holy smokes, the _behind_ on him.”

“ _Rhonda_ ,” Claude splutters, aghast.

“He’s a catch! Walks funny, but he’s a catch.”

“I _know_ ,” Claude laments, forgetting all about his own cold feet and wondering about Sid’s up in the room, his freezing toes he’s constantly shoving underneath Claude’s calves in his sleep.

“Then why do you still show up and and leave here at different times like you’re sneaking around?” She casts him a dark glance. “Don’t tell me you got a woman at home you’re lying to.”

“No, it’s not that, it’s not that.”

“Then lock that sucker down!”

Claude shifts, then cracks. “I can’t lock him down because I have issues!”

“Did he say that? Did you ask him if he thinks you have issues?” Rhonda asks, which is a really natural follow-up question, and.

He stares unblinkingly. “Well, no.”

Rhonda’s eyebrows peak above her horn-rimmed eyeglasses.

Claude presses the heels of his hands into his eyeballs, mystified at how on Earth he ended up having a heart-to-heart with the lady who books his sex getaways. “How could I ask that? How could I look at him and just go, ‘oh, let me ask you to commit even though I can’t, let me treat you bad ‘cause it’s the best I can do.’ I can’t do that!”

“Blah, blah, blah, that is _so_ sad for you,” Rhonda drones, smacking her gum for good measure. “His decision whether he wants to be with you despite the risks, honey. You just have to give him the option, and try your damnedest to do right by him if he takes it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Hmm,” Rhonda hums. Then she clicks around on her computer a couple times. “No, I just checked my fifty-six years of life experience and cross-referenced with my twenty-nine year marriage, and turns out it’s that flippin’ simple.” She looks intently back up at Claude. “But I’m not the one you should be working this out with.”

Claude takes in that information, swallows it down, and heads back to his hotel room well and truly chastised. It’s not that simple, but could it be? Has Claude been making things infinitely more complicated than they really are? It seems impossible at this point that anyone would be willing to take him for all of his inconveniences when he’s _tried_ so many times before. He used to try. It’s been years since he gave up on the idea, but he used to step into each new relationship cautiously hopeful, thinking maybe that person would be enough to fill every role in Claude’s bed, or maybe Claude could fix himself and not need those roles filled. Maybe he could change if that person was the right one for him.

But nobody is more than Sid, nobody could be righter. Sid has filled more roles than Claude can count: the prickly enemy, the careful acquaintance, the leader, the lover in fifty different forms. And still, he can’t be everything, or he wouldn’t be Sid, specific and unfailingly consistent. Sid whom Claude adores and wants to stay.

Sid who’s still waiting in the chair when he gets back to the room. He’s been so patient while Claude floundered. Claude recalls the way Sid was in their younger years when he only thought of Sid as someone to roll his eyes at—always snapping at refs, snapping at opponents, worked up over nothing. He still does it sometimes. It’s possible that no one’s ever really fixed, just always trying to get there, some days worse than others. Sid looks up at Claude, scratching behind his own ear. “So, did you figure out…whatever you needed to?”

“Yeah, guess so,” Claude says. “We gotta have a talk. I have stuff to say that’s way overdue.”

Sid nods like he’s expected this, like he’s been ready for a long time. “Go ahead.”

Claude takes in a breath, braces himself. “I care too much about you to just be in a _thing_ with you. I don’t want to pretend it’s not real anymore. It’s real. The way I feel, Sid…”

There aren’t words for it. Sid looks up at him with big moon eyes, and Claude doesn’t need to hear any words back.

But feelings don’t get rid of Claude’s nature, his inability to ever be fucking satisfied. “The thing is, relationships mean being exclusive, and I—suck shit at that.”

Sid nods. “And what if I said I’d never ask that of you?”

“Huh?”

“I don’t care that you sleep with other people. You’ve done it this whole time, Claude, why would it be unacceptable now?”

“Because we never had a label before. I’ve tried _relationships_ and shit, it never works,” Claude says shakily. “I never cheated on anyone, but I’ve come as close as I could, to the point where it’s the same thing. One time I left a voicemail to break up with a girlfriend while I was in the cab to go sleep with someone else.”

Sid’s mouth becomes a flat line. “Yeah, that’s not the best thing you’ve ever done. Could put a camera on either of us our whole lives and find tons of shit we do wrong.” He breathes out, passes a hand over his head. “How many years ago was that?”

Claude sighs, rubbing his beard a few times. “Like six or seven, I guess.”

“Right. And if I had twenty-four-year-old you with me here, we wouldn’t be havin’ this conversation. You don’t think you’re a better guy now?”

“Better, sure! But I still fuck around! I can’t not, and I’ll never know why. I fucked someone else just last week. How does that feel, Sid? I’m not _growing out_ of this.”

“You don’t need to test me,” Sid huffs. “D’you hear? It doesn’t bother me. You come home to me here, and you could for real if you want to. In Pittsburgh or Philly or, fuck, wherever. We’re thirty-one now, Claude, there’s not that much I expect you to grow out of. I expect to have you like you are. A sex thing that’s stayed consistent over your entire adult life? I know it’s not goin’ away. Shitty communication and some bad decision-making? I’ve _watched_ you do it less and less.”

Fitting, that Sid would see the good in him in places that Claude wasn’t even looking for it. Emotions are a funny thing sometimes, the way they can be absent when you’re expected to have them but appear in full force at the flimsiest of cues. It feels ridiculous that a sparse handful of words like the ones Claude is about to say could make tears spring to his eyes, but still he’s fighting them back when he finally just croaks, “I’m scared.” Because that’s what it boils down to. It’s been safe for years to limit Sid and his place in Claude’s life, to put a ceiling on how deeply Sid could affect him. That way, he could keep telling himself the eternal, obvious lie that it would hurt less when Claude inevitably drove him away.

The truth is that Sid can’t be limited. There’s no reality where it wouldn’t hurt to lose him.

Sid says, “Me too. You think I was never scared you’d run forever? But I decided to trust you, a long time before today.”

Claude’s never wanted to do anything less than let him down. He lifts a hand up in some aborted reach, and Sid stands up from the chair to meet him.

“I can take care of you,” Sid swears. His palm comes up the length of Claude’s back and he moves in incredibly close, until their noses are bumping.

Claude slams his eyes shut. “What if I can’t take care of you back?”

“I believe you can. You already do. When you bring me food while I’m sick or you call me after a bad hit, that’s what that is. When you let me take care of you, that’s taking care of me.”

Claude’s breath feels like it’s stuttering out of him. Time to take the leap. He says very quietly, “Guess you’re already kind of my boyfriend.”

“Mhm,” Sid nods, and it brings their foreheads together. “And if you’re gonna be mine, then there _are_ different things I want, like responding to my texts and visits to our real places. But the monogamy thing isn’t on the list. We’ll have to talk it through more and set some boundaries, but. Yeah.”

Claude attempts to press himself even closer, until his heartbeat thuds through the empty side of Sid’s chest and Sid’s echoes back into his, filling each other’s spaces. His toes bump the arches of Sid’s feet from between them. “Then let’s try.”

“Let’s try,” Sid agrees. “I think we owe that to ourselves, yeah? Let’s try it and see if it works.”

If it doesn’t work, that’ll wreck Claude. That’ll be justification for all the reasons Claude spent years dancing around this in some ass-backwards attempt to keep Sid in his life for longer. Nothing could be more painful than if this doesn’t work. Maybe that alone is reason enough to believe that it will.

He kisses Sid, and when he pulls back, the proof is in their watery smiles.

 

\---

 

They part the next morning with a promise to talk, to plan out when they’re going to see each other not in Harrisburg. It has to go on pause until after the playoffs, but Claude volunteers to come to Pittsburgh whenever it is that playoffs are no longer relevant. It’ll be kind of a bitch to have to nurse Sid’s wounds and sullen disposition after an eventual playoff exit, but it’ll be worth it.

That's not to mention what happens if the Penguins win the Cup again. Claude wants Sid’s success, always, but it’s hard to reconcile that with the success of the Penguins as a unit, which Claude can’t help but root against. It’s a paradox that Claude’s still figuring out. He can't imagine something more aggravating than landing himself in the center of a Cup celebration that wouldn't be his own, if the Penguins are able to do _four_ times what Claude’s been able to do zero times in as many years. But he also can’t deny that Sid looks best in the glow of victory. Claude’s known that since gold medals in Prague, since Sid won the Cup two years in a row and Claude still put up with him. If a triumphant city of Pittsburgh is the burden he has to shoulder to be able to see Sid like that again, then he will.

It’s the least he can do for someone he…loves.

Can you be in love with someone you haven’t tried to know every part of? Claude knows how Sid sleeps, how he breathes when he’s on the edge of an orgasm. But he doesn’t know the things Sid might tell him if they spent more time together, the kinds of things that Sid would share over dinner on a real first date.

Claude’s going to take him on a first date. The kind not set in a dirty pizza parlor.

It’ll undoubtedly be an odd sort of first date. There’s no way it won’t be odd to sit across a table watching a mouth he knows intimately make shapes around childhood stories and treasured memories Claude’s never heard about. He’s known Sid for years, but he kind of can’t wait to get to know him better, to learn what you can’t learn from sex or Google.

Claude still doesn’t know whether that date is two weeks away or two months, but that’s just another obstacle they deal with as hockey players. Claude has difficulties of his own even without making the playoffs, like having to show up to locker clean-out day and try to keep a good attitude.

“Now the focus is already on next year,” he tells the media, struggling to sound anything but depressed. He takes a deep breath and tries not to let it out like a defeated sigh.

But then one of the beat reporters shifts their weight to their other foot and Carter’s stall appears within view over their shoulder. The kid’s watching Claude, eyes wide open and steady. Everyone’s already calling him Hartsy. It makes Claude ache a little with what must be age, nostalgia for when Hartsy meant Hartnell and Claude thought they’d win it all together, them and Danny and Kimmo and everyone else that’s not around anymore. At thirty-one, Claude’s still accepting that time goes by in a blink-and-you-miss-it way. And there’s Carter blinking over at Claude, just barely having stepped past the starting line of his entire career. Claude finds himself saying, “We got talent and spirit here. With this team, we can make something happen. I believe that.”

When the media disperses, Claude makes his way over to the kid’s stall. Carter lifts his hand up for a fist bump, awkward and earnest. “Next year, eh?” he says, more a question than a statement.

“Yeah, next year,” Claude says.

And he’ll keep saying it until they get it done. Right now, the Flyers have a new franchise goalie that's revitalizing their shot at being real contenders, and Claude’s making a real go of a relationship—both for the first time in ages. In some ways, Claude's life is just starting too.

 _Good luck in the first round,_ he texts Sid as he’s on his way out of Virtua for the last time till next fall. _I’m rooting for you._

 

\---

 

It ends up being another Round 2 exit for the Penguins, and Claude’s booked his flight to Pittsburgh by early May, where he’ll help Sid pack up his shit to ship off to Nova Scotia. Sid says maybe if it goes well, he’ll come back to Ottawa with Claude for a little bit before he holes up on the East Coast. They’re figuring out how to do everything as they go along, and it turns out they kind of have to make up their own rules. There aren’t pre-existing guidelines for a relationship with contradictions like theirs: old but new, comfortable but unfamiliar, set across various long distances.

A few hours before his flight, he texts Sid, _see you soon_ , plus a screenshot of his arrival info as a reminder. After a minute, he whips his phone back out and adds a heart emoji, feeling childish and silly. It’s dumb. He hasn’t sent a heart emoji to anyone in ages, aside from possibly his mother.

 _I’ll be at the airport to meet you_ , Sid writes back immediately. And then a heart emoji comes through for Claude too. _Pick somewhere for dinner tonight?_

Oh. Like a date, maybe. So that’s how Claude spends an hour on Yelp running increasingly specific and unhelpful searches like _best casual but private and kind of romantic restaurants in Pittsburgh_ , because he doesn’t know how to tell Sid that of the two of them, Claude is probably not the one best qualified to pick out food in Pittsburgh. But if he throws it back to Sid, he’ll probably miss the play entirely and just show up to the airport with take-out because he thought Claude might get hungry on the drive back to his house.

Claude will be damned if he lets anything like that happen. Instead, he settles on a place from one of many online lists that looks fancy but not in-your-face, and he shoots Sid another message to clear it with him.

 _I’ve been there,_ Sid answers. _Really liked it._

So Claude dials, and a hostess picks up on the first ring. “Hi,” Claude says, willing his voice not to shake. “I’d like to make a reservation.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> *Sid in the bath after Claude passes out on him, wondering how to get the suds out of Claude’s hair when he’s unconscious*: just dunk ‘im, I guess
> 
> Anyway, notes on queer and identity issues in this fic as promised: Obviously, this characterization of Claude displays a total incompatibility with the concept of monogamy. I’d just like to mention that this is meant to be specific to Claude and largely unrelated to his sexual orientation, not a representation of how bisexuality works in general. I’m very aware that bisexuality does not make people unable to be monogamous. Please know that I know that.
> 
> You might call Claude's behavioral patterns polyamory or you might not. People’s definitions of that word differ. I chose to leave it somewhat ambiguous whether Claude could ever have a deep romantic attachment to someone other than Sid at the same time, leaning towards no, probably not. For this reason, I hesitate to tag it as polyamory, seeing as fandom so often uses the descriptor for relationships where that’s a key aspect. But at the same time, there’s a huge contingent of people who use ‘polyamory’ to mean any form of consensual non-monogamy, which is exactly what ensues during Claude and Sid’s relationship. So I guess it's just up to you ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Now, some fun links:
> 
> Jake Voracek actually does think [drinking improves team morale](https://www.sbnation.com/nhl/2017/12/22/16811784/jakub-voracek-flyers-we-got-drunk-that-helped). There really is an [Is Hakstol fired yet?](https://twitter.com/hakstolfiredyet?lang=en) twitter account. The other article titles about Hexy and Hak's respective firings are also real.
> 
> Here are examples of Claude 'picking himself' in situations where he's asked to identify or assign superlatives to other players in the league: [(1)](https://youtu.be/ID3LLr2ZAbo?t=34) [(2)](https://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/claude-giroux-believes-nhl-s-best-franchise-player-is-claude-giroux-181919267.html)
> 
> Bonus — Here's Claude consistently rating Sid as the only other person he'll say is the best: [(1)](https://youtu.be/ID3LLr2ZAbo?t=107) [(2)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k1wRRWrPaw) [ (3, scroll down to see him pick Sid over Connor McDavid)](https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/what-the-blank-claude-giroux-nhl)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [checking in](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18353486) by [pinkish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkish/pseuds/pinkish)




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